Drury Covent Garden | Cafe & Brunch in London

A café in the middle of Covent Garden that deliberately has no Wi-Fi is either an oversight or a position. Drury 188-189 is firmly the second. Two friends walked out of corporate careers to open it, and one of the first rules they wrote down was that nobody would be able to log on: you come here to eat, to read, and to talk to whoever you brought with you.

Highlights

• No Wi-Fi anywhere in the room, and that is policy rather than accident — the founders say plainly that they wanted a place where people put the screen down.
• Coffee comes from Allpress, the Antipodean roastery founded in Auckland that has roasted in East London for years.
• A full kitchen behind the counter: brunch is cooked to order every day of the week, not saved up for the weekend.
• Thousands of paper napkins drawn on by guests have been kept and put on the walls — an accidental archive of everyone who has sat here.
• Walk-ins only. Nothing is bookable, which is why the queue is part of the experience at peak.
• A second, calmer sibling site in north London serves the same idea away from the tourist crush.

What’s in the cup

Drury does not roast, and does not pretend to. It buys from Allpress — a roastery born in Auckland and long established in East London — which tells you most of what you need to know about the style in the cup. This is the Antipodean school: espresso built for milk, a flat white as the default order rather than a novelty, and a roast profile aimed at sweetness and body instead of the bright acidity that filter-led bars chase. It is a house style that suits the room, because almost nobody here is drinking coffee on its own; the cup arrives alongside eggs.

The practical consequence of buying rather than roasting is consistency. A café doing brunch volume every day of the week needs the espresso to behave identically at the first order and the four hundredth, and a settled relationship with one roastery is how that happens. If you want a rotating single-origin filter and a conversation about fermentation, this is not that café — and the team would tell you so themselves.

The non-coffee side is unusually well covered for a brunch room. Matcha is treated as a real drink rather than a grudging concession, and there is a proper tea offer for the half of every table that does not want caffeine in a cup with milk. Freshly baked things sit at the counter for people who only came in for something to carry away.

Who’s behind it

The café was opened in December 2016 by Ali and Cemal, two friends from East London who had no hospitality background at all — one had been lecturing in business and economics, the other worked in security management. That outsider start explains a great deal. People who came up through restaurants would not have banned Wi-Fi in a central London café with a laptop-carrying catchment on every side, and they certainly would not have started keeping every napkin a customer scribbled on. Both decisions came from wanting a room they would want to sit in themselves, and both turned out to be the reason people remember the place.

The stated mission is unfashionably simple: greet everyone, cook with good ingredients, buy locally where possible, run the place as sustainably as they can. It reads like a small business rather than a brand, which in this postcode counts as a differentiator.

What it’s for

Brunch with someone. This is the central scenario and everything is built around it. Two people, a table, food that arrives hot from an open kitchen, and a conversation nobody is checking a phone through. If you are meeting a friend for two hours in the middle of town, this is close to the ideal room for it.

Reading alone. The founders explicitly wanted people to sit with a book, and enough guests take them up on it that eating alone here feels normal rather than conspicuous.

Laptop work — no. Be clear about this before you walk over: there is no guest Wi-Fi, by design. You can tether to your phone and nobody will stop you, but you would be working against the grain of the place, in a room that is loud at peak and turns tables because there is a queue outside. For a working day, look elsewhere. For an hour away from your inbox, that absence is the entire point.

Coffee and food to carry away. There is a large takeaway counter aimed at the office and theatre crowd, so a fast pickup works even when every seat is taken.

The space

The look is warm and deliberately worn: scuffed wooden tables, Polaroid photographs pinned across the walls, a large Frida Kahlo mural, and South American touches through the décor. The kitchen is open at the back, so the room smells like the food and sounds like it too. It is not a hushed speciality bar; it is a busy neighbourhood café that happens to sit in one of the most trafficked parts of London.

Capacity is the honest weakness. There are enough tables to make it a proper sit-down café rather than a counter, but nowhere near enough to absorb a weekend late-morning rush, and since nothing can be booked the overflow forms on the pavement. Ten minutes of waiting is normal at the peak, and longer is possible. The trade-off is that the room stays a room — small enough that the staff recognise regulars and the napkin wall keeps growing.

Beyond coffee

Food is not a prop here, which sets Drury apart from most cafés in this list. There is a real kitchen making real brunch: eggs done several ways, pancakes and French toast on the sweet side, a build-your-own approach to breakfast components, and a baklava pancake that has quietly become the thing people come back for. Baked goods are made fresh for the counter, and there is a lunch register for anyone arriving past the egg hours.

The short version: you can come here purely for coffee, but you would be using about a third of the place. Most people order food, and the kitchen is the reason the queue exists.

When to come

The doors open before the working day starts on weekdays, which is the calmest and best-kept secret window — the office and theatre-district crowd is still in transit, the kitchen is fresh, and you will walk straight to a table. Weekends begin later and run longer, and that is when the queue appears.

One useful thing to know about the rhythm: brunch is not a weekend-only ritual here. It runs every day and continues well past the morning, so a mid-week late breakfast is entirely possible — and far more comfortable than fighting for the same plate on a Sunday. The current opening times are shown in the schedule block on this page.

Getting there

You are on the eastern edge of Covent Garden, in the blocks where it runs into Holborn and the theatre district. Holborn and Covent Garden stations are each a few minutes on foot, with Tottenham Court Road not much further; the café sits behind the theatres rather than on the tourist spine, which is why it feels like a local place despite the postcode. Look for a modest shopfront rather than a signposted destination — it does not announce itself.

Good to know

Three things make the visit better. First, bring a pen: the napkin tradition is real, and the walls are made of what previous guests drew. Second, nothing is bookable, so arrive early or arrive prepared to stand — at busy times the takeaway counter is the reliable fallback. Third, treat the missing Wi-Fi as a feature and bring a book; guests who arrive expecting to work leave irritated, and guests who arrive expecting an hour off leave happy.

One more piece of context: there is a second site in north London, in the Woodberry Down area, with its own menu and a much lower tourist load. If the Covent Garden queue looks unpromising and you are not tied to the centre, that is the same team’s answer.

Questions and answers

Is there Wi-Fi?

No, and it is deliberate. The founders opened the café specifically as a place to disconnect, and they have never added guest Wi-Fi.

Can I work here with a laptop?

Realistically, no. Without guest Wi-Fi, in a loud room with a queue outside and tables that turn, a working session is a fight. Come for an hour off instead.

Do I need to book?

You cannot. It is walk-ins only, which is why timing matters: early on a weekday you will sit straight down, late on a weekend morning you will wait.

Whose coffee do they use?

Allpress, the Antipodean roastery that roasts in East London. Drury does not roast in-house.

Is it only brunch, or can I get lunch?

Both. Brunch runs every day and well into the afternoon, and there is a lunch side of the menu for later arrivals.

What if I don’t drink coffee?

Matcha is taken seriously here, and there is a proper tea list — you will not be stuck with an afterthought.

Is there anywhere to sit if it’s full?

Not much, and that is the main complaint. The takeaway counter is the practical answer at peak, or you shift your visit to a weekday morning.

Is there another branch?

Yes — a sibling site in north London around Woodberry Down, with its own menu and far fewer visitors.

Opening hours